Here are this week’s linky treats. Enjoy!
TV
18 trivia facts about Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Other
Gallery of famous historical personages, Lego style
Fifteen historical inventors’ ideas which were ahead of their time
March 2, 2011
February 4, 2011
Friday Weekly Wrap-up: Board Games, Blood Pressure and Biting One’s Tongue
The week that was!
1) One Good Thing: Picked up a lovely old copy of 221B Baker Street: The Boardgame at BookFest. It’s amazing what serendipity sends your way occasionally…
Don't even get me started on the expansions which have been out of production for decades...
2) One Bad Thing: I now have blood pressure drugs. I was trying very hard not to have to resort to medication there. Well, not trying hard necessarily – I think it’s pretty much out of my control. Probably just hoping really hard. I’m sure there’s absolutely no earthly reason to feel that way, but I’m disappointed in myself now…
3) One Thing I Learned: Well, that I’m not getting a work iPad. Which, given that I’ve got less than a month left to work, wasn’t a big surprise. But that since they’ve got the iPads, they appear to have forgotten about the old iPod Touch devices we all got. And according to a work friend, if I’m very quiet and don’t mention it they probably won’t ask for the iPod back while I am on leave for a year (maybe 2). Mum’s the word…
December 8, 2010
Wednesday Weekly Links
Here are this week’s linky treats. Enjoy!
Movies
The 15 Worst Films of 2010 (which I proudly have seen none of!)
TV
Promising new ABC TV show – billed as “Gay Big Bang Theory”. (Of course it’s ABC so it’ll have 6 episodes and then lose funding because it’s not on commercial TV…)
Books
Five Sci-Fi Childrens Book Mashups
Music
Other
Let’s all make fun of iPhone spelling mistakes…
September 24, 2010
Friday Wrapup: Secondments, Scammers and Single Ladies
The week that was!
1) One Good Thing: Got a lunch invite from an old boss trying to poach me for project work with his new team. I said I wouldn’t commit to anything without doing it all properly (i.e. not annoying my current boss!) and that if anything came up for me we’d sort it out then. But it’s very very nice to be wanted!
2) One Bad Thing: Got a scam email – and then a panicked teary phone-call – from my mother in Hungary; she’d used an internet cafe and they’d stolen her email account and changed her password. The email said she was in trouble in Scotland and needed money, and she was terrified people would have actually sent it over. (Don’t think she realises her Gen Y children are used to that sort of thing. And it was typed in complete coherent sentences, so of course it couldn’t have been from her, my mum emails like a tipsy 15-year-old texts!) My mum almost never cries, and it was awful to hear her do so when she was over the other side of the world. Can’t wait til Sunday morning when she’s home for a big hug!
3) One Thing I Learned: all the real words to “Single Ladies” at last, thanks to The Pigs (see Wednesday’s Post)…
September 15, 2010
Wednesday Weekly Links
Here are this week’s linky treats. Enjoy!
Movies
Star Trek 2 sneak peaks and promises… (all of which you’ll break anyway, JJ Abrams!)
Books
University without textbooks – just iPads (Sign me up!)
Goodreads guide to the Best Fairytales and Retellings (*sighs* my wishlist will never shrink now!)
What the Library could do with all its old books (very cool!)
Other
Five fictional stories you were told in history class
All in the name of science, surely…
September 3, 2010
Friday Wrap-up: Conferences, Classes, and Conjurers
1) One Good Thing: Gave excellent and exciting conference workshop presentation with @katiedatwork and @andvanessa. Everyone muchly impressed. @NaomiDoessel is the best facilitator/organizer ever!
2) One Bad Thing: Taught my first tutorial as a sessional academic on Tuesday. I was brilliant – but where were the students? So few people showed up (out of the 40 or so meant to attend, there were 12 all up) we ended up combining our tutorials and team-teaching. And it was the world’s most boring tutorial material. We do what we can, people…
3) One Thing I Learned: several new magic tricks. On account of how small children can’t keep a secret to save their lives, and we had Magician night at Joey Scouts. (I performed the famous Pre-Cut Banana trick to thunderous applause and wild-eyed amazement – or maybe they were just happy because they got food.)
August 20, 2010
Friday Wrap-up: Air Activities, Agony and Apple
Last chance to breathe before election fever!
1) One Good Thing: took my little Scout kids out to the airport at Archerfield for an activities day – they painted stuff, built stuff, played games, read stories, raced around in sparkly silver outfits pretending to be clouds… and all I had to do was hand out the paintbrushes and drink tea, someone else did all the work. Days like this, being a Scout leader is awesome!
2) One Bad Thing: I keep hearing rumours that my library branch (well, one of the two that I work in) is going to close. It’s not a huge life-changing-job-threatening kind of problem, as my permanent position is in my other branch, so I’m not going to lose my job or anything. It’s just upsetting, as there’s nothing concrete either way from the management to set us straight, and not only is it making it hard to plan for coming months, but it makes it hard to have any enthusiasm about the rest of the year at all. *wails* I feel so undervalued and in the dark!
3) One Thing I Learned: Far, Far, Far too much about how different and difficult and stupid Endnote is on an Apple laptop. Why we don’t have seperate Endnote classes for Mac users is beyond me (though it’s probably segregation and discrimination and illegal…)
July 23, 2010
Friday Wrap-up: Twitter, Tweaks and Turk’s Heads
Last week of (relative) sanity before students come back. A wonderful week for looking at everything you should have done, realising you haven’t done half of it, shrugging and going to the university bar at lunchtime anyway :).
1) One Good Thing: gave a Prezi on Twitter – what it is, how it works, what you can use it for – with Skinnibitch, our workplace’s Marketing/Communications manager, and my boss’s boss’s boss :). It went pretty well (with a couple of minor technical hitches and one audience interruption that nearly threw us), lots of people showed up, and seemed genuinely interested and engaged. I will make TwitterFiends of all librarians, mwahaha!!
2) One Bad Thing: Oh gosh, can I think of one? It’s been a not-too-bad week! I did get back the peer review of an article I submitted to a journal – they want me to make some moderate changes and resubmit. And that means more work. At a sucky time of semester. It’s groan-worthy, if not 100% “bad”…
3) One Thing I Learned: Well, I spent last weekend at scout leader training camp, so the answer to “what I’ve learned” is “OH WOW A LOT FAR TOO MUCH”! 🙂 So I’ll just pick one thing – I learned how to tie a Turk’s Head Knot. Not particularly politically correct, but pretty. It doesn’t have any real practical uses, it’s just decorative. You can do it with two loops, like mine (then it’s called a Gillwell Woggle) or with three. Instructions (not particularly good ones, but you’re all creative people, you’ll work it out) are here…
Looking through the centre. You can see the end of the leather I have yet to glue down...
The knot from the side - you can see the braiding more clearly here...
June 15, 2010
Blogging Month Day 15: Writing proposals, Work-life balance, Worrying news, and Will It Blend?
Halfway through the month: and I’m not sure what to think. I’m getting a kick out of the interaction the whole exercise is bringing. I like the memes. But I do worry that I prattle, and that maybe it’s all too far towards the trivial side of things!
1) One Good Thing: Wrote a really snappy project proposal for my School to try and get them to go digital with the deposit thesis collection they force on us each year. I might just be being vain, but boy this baby was a firecracker of a proposal! When I went to the Aurora Institute earlier this year, one of the biggest things I picked up is that my enthusiasm and ideas-generation is a good thing, but if I want to harness it I have to cement it all in a proper business plan or proposal, and spotlight the benefits (to other people, not to me. And “because it would be awesome!” is not a benefit, sadly.) Anyway, I spotlighted the schizzle out of the benefits in this one, and I think it’s going to be a really powerful document and get me exactly what I want. (Unless it ends up in the Head of School’s recycling bin, that is…)
2) One Bad Thing: not for me, for hubby – his workplace did a staff perception survey, and found that 90% of staff thought they didn’t have an appropriate work-life balance in their position. So tonight after work, he’s sticking around for a compulsory whole-staff meeting to talk about how they could fix this, and then a compulsory whole-staff dinner to thank them for their hard work. Maybe this should have been labelled “One Ironic Thing”…
3) One Thing I Learned: that there’s to be a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie. Oh dear…
4) Today’s Link: We all know the iPad can do amazing things. But the real question is: Will It Blend?
June 8, 2010
Blogging Month Day 8: Friends, Frantic-ness, Facts about iPads and Fundamentalists
Beginning of Week 2: and boy I’m glad it’s June when we’re blogging (so I have time at work to breathe even, let alone spend 15 minutes blogging per day!) I’m hoping you’re not all bored silly by the minutiae of my life!
1) One good thing: last night hubby and I caught up with a good friend of ours for dinner who we’d not seen for a year, at least. Hubby has known this guy since high school, he’s now living in Tassie and at the Maritime college whenever he’s not at sea. He also brought his girlfriend up with him – and I do love meeting the ladies in the lives of “my boys”. Dinner was at a restaurant owned by another friend, and was delicious, we had the place pretty much to ourselves, and it wasn’t too cold a night. Win all round!
2) One bad thing: it’s not such a bad thing, because it’s better than working on ERA rubbish, and it’s got to be done sometimes, but at work the course reading lists for Semester 2 courses started pouring in yesterday. It’s not a bad thing as much as bad timing, since my assistant is off to Europe for 4 weeks tomorrow, and when he gets back it’ll be panic stations for both of us getting everything done. I hate panic stations.
3) One thing I have learned: apparently Apple had the idea for the iPad first, then thought “we could make this a phone too” and turned around to make the iPhone before they did the original iPad idea. (Taken from here – transcript of Steve Jobs interview. It’s quite long, the factoid in question is about halfway down). If anyone can think of a good reason why Apple would have made this decision, please share with the class – because I sure can’t think of one!
4) Today’s link: (Okay, so it’s a webcomic episode, not a link. Sue me.) My Twitter friends (and quite a few RL ones too) have been eBook reader mad lately – so this one’s for you guys (via xkcd.com)
LiberryDwarf 